Half Empty or Half Full?

We are so appreciative of everyone's love and support for Harold. The purpose of this blog was (and is) to communicate accurate information to our friends near and far. Something interesting has happened along the way. I continue to get calls from friends telling me the information that is being communicated is confusing. Some are concerned that Harold's condition is very serious. Some are expressing, No....he is doing great!

The question begs to be asked is "How is Harold really doing?" Followed by, what are the Lefrandt's trying to communicate.

So, let me try and be a little more succinct. Harold's condition is very serious. He has multiple brain tumors. They are very malignant and aggressive. His prognosis is poor at best. Meaning his chance for long term survival is very low. Many might ask, "How long does he have?" We as a family have consulted with doctors and have a pretty good idea of what our best case...worst case scenario is. And it is not good. We could lose him today. We could lose him in 9 months, 12 months, who knows?

As we discussed how to communicate this to our friends and family it became of great importance to us that we do not put "time limits" on the Lord. We did not want to have people saying, "I heard he only has ___months, or years" etc. We feel very strongly about our faith in the Lord and that he expects us to do cheerfully everything that lies in our power and then "stand still" and wait upon him to reveal his plan for us.

I am an optimist. My father was the eternal optimist. I am also a realist and believe I don't have my head in the sand. I have a very clear understanding of our new reality. But, for me the glass is always half full.

Is the glass half empty or half full? is a common expression. We know that this question helps demonstrate that a certain situation can be seen in different ways depending upon one's point of view and that there may be OPPORTUNITY in the situation as well as TROUBLE.

The kids counsel me all the time, Mom, you have to get the hard cold facts out there because we need people's prayers. And so when we wrote the first entry in this blog we gave many sobering details. But many of you have read the optimism. We appreciate that. We are celebrating our successes, however small in this battle right now.

The glass is half full.....there may be opportunity for success. The glass is half empty...there has been and may be more trouble ahead. Please know that we are fighting for Harold's life. There is no question about it. We almost lost him ten days ago and we are not anywhere close to being out of the woods now. But the glass will always be half full for us. We want to do all that we can with cheerful hearts and know that whatever comes our way in the end we are loved by the Lord and have had the great opportunity of having Harold this great man, husband, father, son, brother, uncle, friend in our life! We believe that he is ours forever!

And so, we will post our successful days. And just as soon as we post them things may take a slide downhill a bit. We are having good days and bad days. We are so thankful for your prayers. We need them! We are praying for a miracle here. We may get it in the answer that prolongs Harold's life. And we may surely get a miracle in an answer that is not what we would have desired for ourselves. We know for sure that with faithful hearts we will see a miracle in all of us as the process of this experience will change us!

"While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us." --Benjamin Franklin

We love you! Diane & Kids